Isabel Greenberg

Isabel Greenberg is an illustrator and graphic novelist very much on the rise. Having graduated from the University of Brighton in 2010 she has since been involved in two Nobrow publications, created visuals for The National Trust and last week won the Observer’s Graphic Short Story Competition with her Love in a Very Cold Climate story. With such an impressive year behind her, we decided it was time to catch up to talk comics, warring Inuit tribes and graduate life.

When did you start making comics?

I think I made my first comic for a school GCSE project. Thankfully I do not have a copy because it was probably dreadful! It always liked writing and I always liked drawing, so I used to make illustrated stories quite a lot, but it was only when I was about 16 that I realised I could merge the two together completely.

Is it important to have a script completely polished before you start drawing?

I think it’s important to have a complete story, but I think the script can be fluid. Usually I write my comics in prose first, as a short story. I then make them into scribbled pannels, with rough drawings, so I know what words go with what images, and get the pacing right. So I never really write a script as such, but I always have a very firm idea of the flow of the story.

Sometimes I might think I know what the the dialogue is, but then when I have drawn the character’s face or expression, I realise I have it wrong, and think ‘oh they aren’t saying that!’ and change it.

How are you finding graduate life?

It’s been a lot of ups and downs. There have been a couple of great things, like being in the Nobrow Anthology, but there’s also working a day job and the times when I’ve sent work out to people, and emailed and emailed, and had no responses, and I’ve thought, maybe I should come up with a Plan B. But then I realise I don’t have a feasible Plan B (only fantasy plan Bs like fairground ride painter, or street dancer, but I can’t dance and I hate going on rides) so that’s that!

I’ve spent the time since graduating really concentrating on my own projects, and I think I’ve done better stuff than I did in the whole three years of my degree. I think the strangest thing is getting used to working on your own, and realising that it’s quite a lonely profession. I really miss being in a studio with loads of my friends, but maybe thats why I’ve got more work done!

What’s your favourite comic and why?

My longstanding favourite comic is probably Epileptic by David B – it was one of the first comics I read. I think he’s great and has this amazing way of visually explaining complicated ideas, and his stories have so many layers.

Also Seth, I am a big fan of Seth. If I had to pick a favourite by him it is probably Its A Good Life If you Don’t Weaken, but actually all of his stuff is brilliant. Oh and recently I came across Hark! A Vagrant! by Kate Beaton. I was reading it in the bookshop at the weekend and laughing so loudly that people were looking at me. It’s this amazing series of hilarious strips of her takes on literature and history and everything really. The drawings are so simple but so so funny and the writing is just brilliant!

Sorry, that’s three – but I could have said loads more!

Where did the inspiration for the Love in a Very Cold Climate come from?

I was first thinking about writing a story about two tribes who hated each other so much they physically repelled each other. Then I thought about how inconvenient it would be if two of them fell in love! The North Pole-South Pole bit came after – that’s just because I love watching programmes about polar explorers and Inuit hunters and that sort of thing.

I know it doesn’t really make sense scientifically, but it’s my story about an invented world. I actually noticed under the story in the Observer online that there was a bit of a scientific debate raging! But it’s fiction, go with it!

What’s next?

The story in the Observer is actually one story from a whole series that I am working on from an imagined period of the Earth’s history. It’s going to be a graphic novel called The Encyclopedia of Early Earth. So next is getting that finished…

Further reading:

Posted by
James Cartwright

James started out as an intern in 2011 and is now one of our two editors. He oversees Printed Pages magazine and content wise has a special interest in graphic design and illustration. He also runs our online shop Company of Parrots and is a regular on our Studio Audience podcast.

This week’s most viewed articles

Hot Chip are one of those bands that have always had a fantastic visual sensibility. Illustrator Wallzo has been at the helm of it, bringing us glorious Michael Craig Martin-esque block colours and shapes to decapitated statues. Now, the band is moving into the world of bespoke printing, with the artwork for new album Why Make Sense by Nick Relph using an algorithm that means each copy’s design will be unique.

Yener Torun is a 32 year-old architect who has turned Istanbul into the geographical equivalent of Aladdin’s cave of wonders. Tucked away among the beautiful Ottoman and Byzantine architecture and the blue Bosphorus are a wealth of impossibly bright buildings dominated by geometric patterns, rainbow hues and funny architectural idiosyncrasies. And through his Instagram account, Yener has been slowly but steadily documenting it all.

He may not grace the covers of magazines or the red carpet, but designer Simon Whybray is more famous than you think. When you’re lurking about on the internet and being entertained by seriously cool and interesting stuff – do you ever stop and think, who the hell made this? Well, occasionally, it’s Simon. Designer by day, Tumblr scroller by night, Simon spends most of his time tucked up in his bedroom overlooking Old Street on his laptop. Sound lazy? It isn’t. He’s busy creating products, GIFs, designs, logos, club nights, clothing, memes, typefaces, music…you name it. Being on the internet all day has fed Simon’s brain like a drip, and subsequently he’s now asked by big brands to come in and teach them what the hell is going on out there in the real – well, online – world.

It’s not often I get to write about my two great loves in a single article, but sometimes the stars align and I’m covering smoked fish and graphic design all in the space of 300 words. Today I feel blessed! This strange combination of subjects has come together thanks to Swedish agency Kurppa Hosk undertaking a wholesale rebrand for Falkenbergs Lax, a small, family-owned smoked salmon specialist. Charged with turning the small-scale brand into an international major player in the fish industry, Kurrppa Hosk renamed it Korshags, and have came up with a sleek new visual identity to accompany the new name.

While magazine redesigns often receive a great deal of attention, few are likely to be more scrutinised than the new-look New York Times Magazine which debuts on Sunday. The Times is the leading newspaper in the US and its magazine is read by nearly four million people every week. When listed, the changes design director Gail Bichler and her new art director Matt Willey have implemented sound exhaustive – redrawn fonts, a redrawn logo, a new approach to lay-outs, a new-look version of the online magazine. Add to this a raft of new features and editorial changes (such as a new weekly poem, a column that rotates between four critics and a dispatch from the frontline of internet culture) and you’d be forgiven for thinking that the new magazine will be unrecognisable.

Most recent articles

Exciting new student alert! Meet Pauline, currently working on her advanced degree in type design at École Estienne in Paris – how glamorous does that sound? It’s rare to find a student with as much consistently fantastic work on their site, and for a while I didn’t actually twig that Pauline was still studying. She’s designed typefaces, had a bash at letter pressing for her business cards, and made some publications that, if I’m honest, I’d actually buy. The way she represented a bunch of Stéphane Monnot short stories is well-designed without overshadowing the writing, and that publication about the concept of an ornament just looks fantastic. Remember this name: Pauline Le Pape, she’s got big things ahead of her.

How best to describe the enduring and ubiquitous influence of COS? The brand has become almost cult-like in its appeal since it was founded a mere eight years ago, creating designs which are somehow timeless and classic and simultaneously innovative.

“I’ve been thinking about this forever and want a woman’s touch”…"In shape, 29 y/o, six feet tall"…"I know it sounds crazy but it’s a fantasy of mine for a woman to"… These are the most SFW snippets we can publish from a rather nuts, very rude new project by Cartelle Interactive, the people that brought us the brilliant, trippy J Dilla Donuts tribute, Dilla Dimension.

In the two years since we first featured nomadic designer Gabriela Maskrey she’s taken on a lot of new projects and pushed her skills in all sorts of new directions. Originally she was all about editorial design – which it has to be said, she was great at – but she’s recently branched out into branding for Peruvian luxury food company La Pulperia. Her bold serif rendering of the company name coupled with historic imagery referencing Peru’s gastronomic culture combines to satisfying effect, and the addition of hand-drawn icons is a great touch too. All in all a great first foray away from the world of books and magazines.

When you hear the words “branded content” you probably don’t get that excited, right? Well, times are changing. No longer do brands want to settle for something that isn’t going to whet the imagination of an audience, and so they’re recruiting fantastic creatives and partnering with cool platforms to make it actually worth everyone’s time. With this in mind, check out this pretty breathtaking animation created by Google Play in collaboration with Creative Sunday.

When an insurance company challenges you to not skip through their latest ad on YouTube, your first reaction is likely to be “try me.” But you know what? They have actually pulled something pretty remarkable together for their latest advert. Well, I say remarkable, it’s pretty low-budget, but the idea behind it is great. Knowing that the majority of people wouldn’t watch an insurance ad on YouTube unless you were holding a gun to their head, they made their advert two seconds long. Then if like me you enjoy the first two seconds, you can stay for the whole thing. Best thing about this ad is how they didn’t even green screen the family, and you can see them wigging out and twitching as that dog goes all Beethoven on their dinner. Nice.

Discussing the “treacherous tide” of the “constantly surging ocean” of the web last year, we looked at the brilliant UK redesign of Wired, a project that wowed pretty much everyone. Now, the US Wired site has also upped its game in its first redesign since 2007, aiming to “create a clean and gratifying experience” through a clutter-free site. We had a chat with editor in chief Scott Dadich about designing a site for some very, very digital-savvy readers.

Toronto-based illustrator and cartoonist Jenn Liv is a whizz with colour. With sustained attention to detail, she illustrates often quite stereotypical moments but always with a twist. There’s a great battle between two knights on a cliff edge at sunset, just giving up; a romantic moment, flowers, a white dress, a gust of wind and the man just nonchalantly wandering off.

I think I might never have seen two illustrators as well paired as Faye Coral Johnson and Mike Redmond, the duo behind this charming new book Behind the Wild Heart. Faye’s work – sketchy, sweet and imperfect – seems to slot right in with Mike’s dynamic cartoony characters, and the two work together so often that it’s difficult to tell where one’s work ends and the other’s begins.

Often the most interesting branding work hinges on a simple twist, and such is the case in this work by Freytag Anderson for Fraher architects. The Scottish studio’s concept revolves around the neat idea of the “F” in the logo doubling up as an architectural floorpan.

“Las Vegas is the strip club capital of the world,” says Stefanie Moshammer, an Austrian photographer whose recent project led her to the underbelly of Nevada’s shimmering city. Stefanie began work on a series called Vegas and She, in which she documents strippers, nightclubs, and various bits and bobs that represent Las Vegas culture: bright pink limos, dust trails, palm trees, and diving boards into sapphire pools.

Editors' Picks

Hattie Stewart never stops giggling. It’s infectious, she’s a hoot. Her current solo show at London’s KK Outlet is under way, with a whole bunch of her now notorious, collectible doodles on magazine covers and, more recently, leather jackets. A Kingston graduate, Hattie now works for the likes of Rookie, House of Holland, Pepsi, and whoever else wants a big old dose of colour and weird magic injected into their brand. Her working style is instantly recognisable, and you’d be right in thinking that the nature of her work ties in to what she wears day-to-day.

Last week an interesting Twitter debate sprang up after a comment by graphic designer Andy Pressman who admitted that on a recent series he worked on it wasn’t always possible to read the books before designing the covers. So we decided to speak to a few other book cover designers and find out where they stand on this apparently quite divisive design issue; as ever you can add your thoughts using the comment thread below…

Life can be pretty boring when you’re a teenager. Rather than turning to the gory allure of video games and SnapChat, 18-year-old Izumi Miyazaki decided to take matters into her own hands and make a series of selfies that make yours look absolutely rubbish. By utilising household items and foodstuffs as props, and sometimes going as far as building her own sets (see head in the clouds photos below) Izumi transports herself into far off lands, so far off that they’re on a different world entirely. Her fixed, deadpan stare throughout makes the project not just endearing but also worth much more than if she was just larking about. It’s art, man. FYI she also sells badges and other small merch items – get ’em while you can.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve eaten sans serif, I’ve made huge typographic swear words with an ex, I’ve wandered Dalston taking pictures of kebab shop exteriors and I’ve seen Bodoni predict my fortune. Hell, I’ve even tried typographic dating. Why? Because of Sarah Hyndman, the one woman tour-de-force behind the Type Tasting enterprise, which takes a fun approach to typography and how it affects us emotionally.

Brooklyn-based graphic designer Elana Schlenker is not only the creator of “occasional pamphlet of typographic smut” Gratuituous Type, she’s also a freelancer with a magnificent array of colourful projects on her (frankly quite beautiful) website, a very good speaker, an exhibitor at exhibitions in Edinburgh and at London’s own KK Outlet. And she’s won a bunch of awards, too. Her aesthetic is pastel coloured without being sickly, innovative without feeling audacious and involves the kinds of books which just seem to make life nicer.

Toronto-based illustrator and cartoonist Jenn Liv is a whizz with colour. With sustained attention to detail, she illustrates often quite stereotypical moments but always with a twist. There’s a great battle between two knights on a cliff edge at sunset, just giving up; a romantic moment, flowers, a white dress, a gust of wind and the man just nonchalantly wandering off.

I think I might never have seen two illustrators as well paired as Faye Coral Johnson and Mike Redmond, the duo behind this charming new book Behind the Wild Heart. Faye’s work – sketchy, sweet and imperfect – seems to slot right in with Mike’s dynamic cartoony characters, and the two work together so often that it’s difficult to tell where one’s work ends and the other’s begins.

The reason design blogs and Pinterest are overcrowded with hand-painted signs, hand-made furniture and hand-printed textiles is because (you guessed it) it’s made by hand – and the joy of seeing craftsmanship is never, ever going away. The world is changing, and the more we demand, and the shorter our attention spans become, the less we’re spending time on getting things just right.

Belgrade-based illustrator Bratislav Milenkovic’s work is intricate and mechanical, with every detail forming the nuts and bolts of an elaborate piece of slapstick comedy. The characters, objects and abstract shapes play an equal role in Bratislav’s compositions. The lightly-airbrushed, knobbly kneed people (all with fantastic hair) are lost amongst the melee but only for the added impact of discoveries like: “oh! There’s a guy cranking an ice bucket over his own head” or “why is that guy exfoliating a Christmas tree?”

LA artist Misia emailed in last week with a bunch of her drawings and paintings, and I was super impressed. She’s managed to mash up Nick Sharratt’s illustrations from Jacqueline Wilson books with The Babysitter’s Club, The Fresh Prince and a bunch of other pop culture references – all drawn in well-practiced monochromatic inks. Unique and skilful aesthetic aside, what I truly love about Misia’s drawings are the characters in them – GIRLS. Girls barefoot doing acrobatics in living rooms, girls lounging on beds listening to music, girls hanging out together doing nothing, girls wearing zigzag leggings and looking bored. These pictures remind me that I’m a girl, and being a girl is SO cool. They make me want to text every female I know and arrange some sort of day where we can watch TV for hours and eat peanut butter on crackers and cereal out the box. I hope it does the same for you.

Having cut his teeth at Adult Swim, Joseph Veazey has since been art directing for label Azede Jean-Pierre and freelancing all over New York City. He also has a fine knack for making engaging and fun self-promotional printed matter and turning his sketchbooks into true works of art.

A comic-book sequel to Fight Club has been announced, telling the story of the original’s star Tyler Durden ten years on. Tyler, who was played by Brad Pitt in the David Fincher-directed 1999 film, will be shown to be dependent on prescription drugs, and living with his housewife spouse and a difficult young son.

Illustration portfolios don’t come much more joyful than this one by Tim Colmant, a Belgian illustrator with a knack for Memphis-inspired patterns, cheery colours and entertaining ideas. Looking around his diverse work feels like strolling into the fantasy land of Ettore Sottsass, decked out as it is in bright purple and yellow, swirling shapes and repetitive geometric patterns, and it’s more or less impossible to leave feeing anything less than happy. Feel free to try this out for yourselves.

“I like working at night when the world is quiet and all the residual energy is loose and flowing around in the atmosphere because most people are asleep and not gobbling it all up,” says David Barnes. “I’m not sure if that’s a real thing or not but thinking that way motivates me to stay up til 5am working distraction-free, feeding off the dreams of others.”

In the three years since we last posted Simon Roussin’s work it appears the French cartoonist has become something of a cinephile. A huge amount of his illustrated output now comes in the form of homages to classics of the medium, including obsessive screen-printed books about the late, great Steve McQueen, Gerard Depardieu’s best bits and some of Clint Eastwood’s most brutal showdowns. Of course it goes without saying that his drawing goes from strength to strength. What’s wonderful about Simon’s film obsession is his ability to balance an addiction to the silver screen and a prolific illustration career, something my mum once told me was impossible.

There was an interesting discussion on our podcast recently about why anyone would really want to watch the creative process taking place. Off the back of our visit to see what was essentially P J Harvey in a box, we’ve spent a lot of time chatting about how the creative process is slow and messy and frustrating, littered with wrong turns and dead-ends.

Despite only having graduated from Falmouth University last summer illustrator Beth Walrond already has an admirable portfolio of work to show for herself. This is probably due to the warmth and relatable nature of her style – she builds textural, expressive characters out of geometric shapes and soft lines to create identifiable narratives, condensing complex messages down into sweet, two-dimensional form. Now working out of Berlin, her newest projects include work for Hunger Magazine, The Ride Journal, Wired UK and The Debrief, leading us to believe she’s got a hell of a lot more ideas to get down on paper yet.

What could be better than six cool pals getting together to make a whopper of a comic book? Meet Collection Revue, a French sextet formed in 2010 and made up of Sammy Stein, Vanessa Dziuba, Marine Le Saout, Antoine Stevenot, Jean-Philippe Bretin and Julien Kedryna. For a year they spent their time and money putting on a bunch of small shows in Paris, exhibiting the work of cartoonists, visual and graphic artists and illustrators to what I can only imagine is a very cool and good-looking crowd. They now channel their collective obsession into very, very appealing publications.